At the paper, we've been having a lot of debates about interactive journalism. The philosophical dilemmas are fascinating.
My paper is aggressively neutral and (ever since we ran into some problems with a former colleague a few years ago) scrupulous about accuracy. I would say one of our strengths in the market place is that readers see us as less biased than some of our competitors.
Will becoming a more interactive news portal jeopardize that reputation? In theory, it's great to allow readers to post comments to our stories and link to other relevant material. But what if they post information or link to stories that we know are WRONG? The dinosaurs in our debate argue we should intervene; web purists seem to believe that would be violating the freewheeling ethic of web communications.
I worry that, if we give readers wide-open access to our website, we will leave ourselves open to being manipulated by savvy political propagandists. there's lots about crowd sourcing that's inspiring -- how wonderful to get retired accountants involved in ferretting out corruption in a community, as one of my company's papers did! -- but there's lots of room for abuse too. The crowd didn't police itself too well in Bosnia, when milosevic started using the media to foment ethnic hate.
I honestly don't know what the right answer is. Basically I think the most intelligent response to change is to embrace it -- because it's damn hard to stop. But should we be setting some limits on how far we go? Or is that a futile exercise?
A review of the best newspaper Web sites for 25-to-34 year olds found they:
Were simple to navigate.
Were local first.
Offered a news lineup hierarchy so readers could quickly find the top stories of the day. In many cases, front-page stories didn't automatically become home page top stories.
Included news updates early in the morning.
Clearly distinguished ad content from editorial content — one of the major challenges Web sites face. The 25-to-34 year olds say ad content is important to them in print and online, and for this reason it is important to be upfront with them about advertising vs. news.
Offered depth through archives and Web extra content.
Provided extensive and searchable entertainment listings.
Included special Web sections, photo galleries, multimedia.
Through content, photos and design, showed viewers where they were, what the community was about.
It is written by Jody Brannon. You may not know, but Jody is an AU alum and also an AU adjunct in the IJ program. She was previously executive producer at usatoday.com and at washingtonpost.com. She also chaired the Online News Association conference held in D.C. this fall; it was mentioned in the post about BBC. Way to go, Jody!
NYU Journalism Department Professor Jay Rosen (pictured) has started a new project where he's tapping the energy of hundreds of amateur journalists to do what he calls open-source investigative reporting.
Sound cool or what?
His project -- NewAssignment.net -- is still in beta, but Rosen's started a blog where you can watch the project blossom (or wilt).
He's published a lengthy post about open-source journalism in his blog, PressThink. It's a two-part Q & A with former Times-Picayune reporter John McQuaid, which drills down some of the key issues traditional reporting currently faces; McQuaid identifies 2 in particular:
more people have more access to information. According to McQuaid:
"When I started out, we got “the wires” on our office computers, and I thought that was pretty amazing back then — AP dispatches and updates in real time! [...] But of course, a great tool for us was equally great for everybody else. Readers now have access to almost all the information that journalists do, and they began sharing it, commenting on it and picking apart the stories. Hence many problems bloomed for the mainstream press, which declined in relevance and lost some credibility."
news consumers are choosing alternatives to 'top-down' traditional reporting. McQuaid again:
"I never much liked the “Voice of God” emanating from the NYT and other influential institutions. It was entertaining — and often useful — to see platoons of bloggers pick it apart and puree the pronouncements (sometimes fairly, sometimes not). Reading some of those critiques made me increasingly dissatisfied with newspaper conventions. In a highly partisan landscape, straight newspaper accounts of political fights that dutifully parroted “both sides” or interviewed a bunch of talking heads offering differing perspectives often did a bad job of capturing what was really happening. But a single blogger could often get to the nub of an issue in a single paragraph (usually, of course, by analyzing the journalism)."
McQuaid also discusses some the ways that journalists can tap into new online tools and communities to help them write their stories:
"communities of experts are especially valuable. The world is complex, and increasingly run by subcultures of people with very specialized knowledge. In most cases, they’re already wired together – fisheries specialists, scientists and engineers, federal regulators, political operatives. If you make an entree into these groups via listserv, blogging, website, and they’ll work with you in either an organized or ad hoc way, you’re halfway there."
Among Steve Outing's specific complaints, he wonders why more newspapers aren't doing more audio and video, which remain "at stepchild status at best."
He also says newspapers too often remain stuck in "gather all the facts, then write the story" mode when it comes to breaking news. More papers should be blogging about breaking news as it develops, he says. "Some stories are important enough--are urgent enough--that they should be treated to a 'here's what we know now' and 'here's what else we just learned' an hour later treatment," he writes.
He also complained about boring online classified ads and a relative lack of true interactivity. "Too many sites remain stuck in one-way, we-tell-you mode," he writes.
One thing he doesn't target is something that continually bugs me on newspaper sites: presentation and ease of use.
Newspapers dedicate years and multiple staffers to redesigns of the physical product, but Web design still too often comes across as an afterthought.
Washingtonpost.com, for example, is full of good information but it looks cluttered and uninviting. The New York Times' site is better since its semi-recent redesign, with a more orderly appearance and plenty of variety high up on the page. Meanwhile, the site for a place like the Austin American-Statesman, where I used to work, hammers you with brutally large ads and makes you jump through registration hoops to access its articles.
Anyone else have examples of particularly inviting/uninviting newspaper sites?
At the Online News Association conference last month, the BBC’s Adrian Van Klaveren showed a video that depicts a fictional bombing in London in 2010 (download video; careful…it’s large). Specifically, it depicts a tight relationship between the BBC and individuals, who are both helping to report on the event (through pictures, video, etc.) and receiving news of such events in new ways, producing a compelling news story across a variety of platforms.
In one sense, I don’t know if this is particularly new. News organizations have always followed up on newsworthy story ideas from the public or sought out eyewitnesses to major events to interview. This technology just provides a more efficient way to do so than in the past.
But, as news organizations become increasingly reliant on “citizen journalism” and the citizens who have the means to contribute to such journalism, are these organizations incorporating efforts to ensure that people who don’t have the means or who aren’t otherwise a part of the “cyber” world aren’t left out?
Although the technology is spreading and becoming cheaper, there’s no guarantee that the technology will be accessible to people of all socio-economic levels. Even today, for example, more than a century after it was invented, roughly 7 percent of U.S. households still lack telephones, according to the U.S. Telecom Association.
I believe that in a lot of ways, the industry is still grappling with the same fundamental question it was asking itself five years ago: Should our focus be on applying the best standards and values of the old medium – or should it be innovating and shaping a completely new medium? I have always argued that the answer should be “all of the above.” Standing for important things and being willing to embrace the new are not mutually exclusive.
What Google and Yahoo have recognized is that information and advertising are wedded. They are developing tools to deliver highly-individualized content (that is information) to people and then selling the information about those people to advertisers. They micro-target distribution of information in order to micro-target distribution of advertising.
But in the end the argument about paid online content leaves out a crucial factor. It doesn’t matter if we believe we need to be paid for our content in order to survive. What matters is if readers believe they need to pay for our content on the Internet. --Rati Sud
I'd like to point you guys to a neat multimedia presentation at this MSNBC page.
It's by a great photogrpaher, Ed Kashi, who has done stories for National Geographic.
This is a digital flipbook produced by Mediastorm (another great website and company). It is a great way to present a story that will hold someone's attention but as a photographer, I'd like to see the very best shots from a tight edit of the work.
The video is a little snarky at MSNBC, but it should be posted soon on the Mediastorm website.
Also, there is some interesting background info on this project.
MSNBC actually bid for the work on an online auction at the Mediastorm site. Mediastorm received bids from news and lifestyle mags from around the world. That sounds very, very interesting to freelancers.
A place like Mediastorm might just be the new Gatekeepers of news and information.
Previously unfiltered information from bloggers or citizen journalists will be sent to online news auction houses where only the best content is distributed over the internet.
I guess this would be for those people looking to gain credibility, of course any Joe or Jane Blogger would be free to put up a site for whatever they want to talk about.
I'm sure some of you saw this article in the New York Times last week.
This is the kind of success story that just gets my goat, mainly because this kid didn't do anything except sit around eating potato chips and running a blog about the TV news business, and now he's some kind of boy wunder.
If you're not familiar with it, this guy started his TV Newser blog a couple years ago and he somehow got some notoriety for it. Then Mediabistro essentially bought the TVNewser brand, paying him to keep doing what he's doing and bringing his site into Mediabistro's brand.
I figured they were paying him something, but according to this article it's "enough to cover his tuition," which leads me to believe they're paying him $20k + a year.
And for what? To sit at his computer 18 hours a day, essentially compiling short email scoops he's been sent. I mean, he's not adding original commentary or analysis...a robot could do this.
If you think I just hate the TV Newser kid because he's getting paid to do this and I'm not, you're probably right. Still, I wish nothing but the worst for him.
Journalists must develop new skills to stay ahead of its overseas competitors
Poynteronline.com recently ran an article, titled, “Offshoring: Coming Trend for Copy Desks?” that talks about many of the editing functions that are going overseas to countries like India and Singapore, where the work can be done at a lower cost.
This means that we will need to develop new skills to protect our jobs and remain “essential” in an industry that is changing quickly.
The article provides some advice to copy editors that touches on what they can do to secure their jobs, which got me thinking about what else a copy editor (or communications person in general) could do to stay in the game.
A few things that come to mind are as follow:
1 - Start a blog; update it everyday. Subscribe to a feed management service, such as FeedBurner, to increase readership.
2 - Identify the overseas companies that your organization is working with. Get to know them, learn their strengths and weakness, begin working with them directly if possible.
3 - As the article points out, proximity will give you an edge, so carve out a subject area that you can call your own. In other words, become an “untouchable,” as Thomas L. Friedman points out in his book “The World is Flat.”
4 - Learn to use new media technologies, including content management systems, which are now more popular than ever before.
As companies send more and more work overseas in an effort to save money, we should study the shift carefully, while identifying ways to improve our skills and learning to work with overseas staffs as well.
I thought this particular website Meetup.com was interesting because this website is using the Internet as a tool to get people involved to “meetup” in person. This site literally has hundreds of different topics of what you would like to meet up with other people in person. It could be about knitting, fashion, sports, travel, languages etc. You can see all the different topics at the Topics Menu
I found out about this website while doing research for my writing project. I was trying to find about people involved in the fashion industry in the Washington, DC area and interviewed a fashion designer/merchandiser. It was so easy to reach her through this website, you just have to create a log in and password and then you are connected and can network with others in your area.
The site was founded by Scott Heiferman, who recently appeared on Good Morning America as an Internet feature story This website is growing and can be a good way to bring people together in a community, it was initially started post September 11 as a way to bring people together in the community. “People are using the Internet as this tool to give them what they need,” said Heiferman.
These “meetups” are helping them to find connections in many ways. I thought this was interesting as well, based on the class discussion we had a few weeks ago talking about how in some ways the Internet is potentially isolating people because of the way they are being “social” in such an anti-social environment.
However, I think that this site is different in the way that it is simply using the Internet as a tool to create initial contact between people in a community and essentially linking them on-line in an effort to get them to meet up off-line.
As an avowed muckraker, he’s worried about what will become of the practice as the big news orgs like the New York Times and the Washington Post face staff reductions (earlier post) and other challenges. “Newspapers will cease to exist on paper over time,” he says. “The question’s not, is it going to happen – it’s when.” News investigations are time-consuming and costly, which makes them less appealing to corporate owners looking to reap fat profits from newspapers. Meanwhile, online sources such as Google News and Yahoo mostly serve as headline aggregators with little original journalism.
The good news is, the flagging focus on in-depth projects leaves plenty of engaging and important stories for enterprising online journalists to uncover, he says.
We have a very large global independent laboratory right now and everyone should be testing models, testing ideas, and testing means of distribution and ways to create more substantive journalism in the online context, because there’s clearly a need for it and it will evolve.
We’ve all seen it before. A news story submitted by a viewer from his or her cell phone. Many of these images show police beating a “helpless” suspect, climatic weather situations or even horrific car crashes. So if you have a camera phone, will you be the next Dan Rather or Katie Couric—I don’t think so.
Grant Burningham, web producer with The New York Times did just that. Armed with his camera phone and a great pair of running shoes, he reported from the front lines of the New York marathon. As only a true journalist could do, he made me feel as if I was a part of this marathon. Listen to his 5 one-minute or so newscasts. http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/sports/20061106_MARATHON_AUDIOSS/blocker.html
Reporting is hard enough but think about the pressure to report, produce and place on the web your newscast. Choosing the correct words and maintaining journalistic integrity are key. The last newscast recorded at the finish should serves as a lesson for us.
I must say that I don't have too much to add to this, other than to note that I'm glad that I'm in a program through which I can learn skills to enable me to be successful in a rapidly changing industry.
Soundslides 1.4 helps journalists and media enthusiasts create audio slide shows in a short period of time, as Chhayal Parikh demonstrated on November 11, 2006.
The application’s clean, simple interface lets users import their photos and audio files without having to work through multiple screens.
There are some popular applications that could be used to develop similar projects, such as DemoShield, Macromedia Flash or PowerPoint, but they are expensive and require some training.
This application will pay for itself the first time you use it. I tried it out last night, and it took only a few minutes to put together a short clip. Click here to watch and listen.
Many Internet sites stream video and audio, and I expect to see much more of it after Microsoft releases its next operating system, Windows Vista, which will ship with Media Center, Movie Maker, and Photo Gallery.
Although it will be a while before Soundslides is able to compete with Microsoft, it’s a product with legs and solid enough to stand on its own.
The biggest challenge that the makers will face is enriching the application without weighing it down with so much functionality that it becomes another complicated and difficult-to-use application.
But let’s not fuss over this now and instead enjoy what we have. It is perfect the way it is.
Soundslides runs on both OS X and Windows XP, and a licensed copy runs for $39.95.
I know this is last minute, but thought someone may be interested.
Steve Wozniak is discussing and signing "iWoz: From Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It."
First Google announced a deal through which it would start selling advertising space in some newspapers.
Now Business Week Online reports that Yahoo has struck a deal with some newspapers including Hearst and Media News that would include classifieds, local news and content packages based on general themes, like travel.
This could drive more traffic to Yahoo’s help-wanted site HotJobs, which trails its key competitors including CareerBuilder.com that is co-owned by Gannett, Tribune and McClatchy (which got CarreerBuilder with its KnightRidder purchase).
Newspapers would supply content including help-wanted ads. In return, they would get a cut of the ads sold around search results of their content.
It definitely appears as if newspaper executives are embracing the Internet as not only a means to server their readers, but also as a way to bolster sagging advertising and circulation revenue.
Many television networks across the country last week aired a YouTube video clip of two police officers arresting a man, and some people are concerned with the amount of physical force the officers used.
Regardless of how you might feel about the arrest, however, it is clear that YouTube has become more than a repository of video clips, and every now and then, a clip, like the one above, is going to make headlines.
Both citizens and law enforcement agencies have probably logged onto YouTube, watched the clip, and read through many of the comments and responses that appear on the site.
The video has sparked a lot of dialog and will have both the citizens and city police authorities in Los Angeles talking for quite some time about the arrest.
It's safe to say now that YouTube has its official spot on the Internet. And as long as there are video recorders, there will be citizens sharing their clips with the Internet community at large.
The way we view information may be changing, but basic writing skills still stand strong at the base of the convergent media monster. They are what seperate a respectable writer from the mass of novice bloggers. They are the signals telling a reader that this information is professional, quality, and in the case of journalism, trustworthy.
At the National Press Club's annual book fair on Wednesday night, I met the vice president of the Poynter Institute, Roy Peter Clark. He was standing behind the row of tables among the other authors and his new book, "Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer." Mr. Clark wished me luck on my career as a journalist and handed me a signed copy. Since then, I have yet to put it down.
I highly recommend this book to everyone in the class. It's a clear, concise and powerful guide to writing, divided up into 50 short sections. Clark uses entertaining anecdotes and clever examples explaining both when and how to use these writing "tools". Even now, as I write this blog entry I've been thinking through the ones I have read thus far (I'm about halfway through the book). Some of these include:
Tool #4- Be passive-aggressive. Use passive verbs to showcase the "victim" of action.
Tool #14- Get the name of the dog. Dig for the concrete and specific, details that appeal to the senses.
Tool #22- Climb up and down the ladder of abstraction. Learn when to show, when to tell, and when to do both.
There is also a handy list in the back of the book, displaying all 50 tools, which Clark suggests the reader copy and place either in their wallet or by their desk as reference. It's definitely, in my opinion, a good investment for any aspiring writer.
Judging by our progress so far, I've decided most of you need a little more time to put together a good first draft. This will shorten the time available for the final project, but it will let you get some more reporting under your belts. The NEW DRAFT DUE DATE IS TUESDAY, Nov. 28. We will go over this on Saturday.
Poynter Online E-Media Tidbits has an interesting blog today questioning whether Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, who spoke at the annual Hearst Changing Media Landscape panel discussion Tuesday night, is less enthusiastic about citizen journalism than a traditional news editor.
Although Wales' WikiMedia Foundation includes Wikinews, a citizen journalism site, the Wiki founder seemed troubled by citizen journalists propensity to cover only stories that they are personally interested in while professional journalists provide the "work-horse reporting".
In other words, citizen journalists tend to provide commentary or analysis, with sometimes questionable objectivity, while mainstream journalists write the stories they are assigned in an environment that provides "mechanisms to ensure reporters are not just pushing an agenda", according to Wales.
Smith fondly recalled his early days in journalism at a small Indiana newspaper where one of the top reads was a column by a local elderly woman on the social "goings-on" in a nearby community. "That column 'captured the marrow' of the community in a way that most newspapers today fail to", said Smith, whose paper plans to embrace citizen journalism.
This, I believe, is that middle ground in crowdsourcing - the concept of hyperlocal reporting.
Mike Mills, who spoke at our class last Saturday, mentioned Rob Curley, VP of Product Development at Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, as being one of the early digital journalism gurus emerging from the ljworld.com and lawrence.com interactive journalism crucible.
Mills said of Curley, "he is actually an old-school journalist" who once stated "The problem with newspapers is that they forgot how to cover the prom."
This chestnut holds the key to the value of crowdsourcing: there aren't enough professional journalists to cover your block in your neighborhood, not to mention providing online video of your kid hitting the homerun in his little league game. All of the videocams and cellphone cams are in the hands of the people who can cover hyperlocal news.
Adrian Holovaty, self-proclaimed "mad scientist" at Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive and another Lawrence.com alumnus, named Rob Curley as the innovator in rapid web development for online journalism and serving up local interest stories as quickly as major events.
Speaking of Lawrence.com to a programmer's conference, Holovaty says: "RobCurly - he was our boss there, and he really encouraged this really really rapid web development. It's essentially web development - computer programming - with journalism deadlines. It's a fusion of those two concepts."
"So, one of these trials by fire was when Rob came up to us and he said 'Hey, it's summer, that means it's time for little league.' and he had this wacky idea - why don't we take local little league, which is about a hundred... more than two hundred teams or something like that, and treat these teams like they're the New York Yankees."
Curley identified the raison d'etre of citizen journalists by covering a hyperlocal event in equal stature to a major-league event, thereby generating local reader interest.
London's Press Gazzette has named the top 50 people shaping Britian's online journalism.
No. 1 on the list was Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corp. His "digital immigrant" speech at the American Society of Newspaper Editors may come to be seen as a turning point of online journalism, the paper said.
Among the other's that I recognized are Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist who was No. 3; Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe, founders of MySpace who were No. 12 and 13; and Matt Drudge, publisher of The Drudge Report who was No. 27.
What is a blog? Most newspapers, when they don’t have too much time to elaborate, define a blog as a ‘personal online journal’. That analogy is not completely wrong nor is it entirely right. Where they differ is that conventional journals start and finish in a chronological order, whereas blogs are displayed in reverse chronological order with the most recent entry on top. Of more importance is the fact that the definition above completely misses the main point about blogs. Conventionally, journals were private or even secret affairs, and were never linked to other journals. Blogs, by contrast, are social by nature, whether they are open to the public as a whole or only to a small select group.
The word “blog” was first used in 1997, when one of the few practitioners at the time, Jorn Barger, called his site a “weblog”. In 1999, another user, Peter Merholz, lightheartedly broke the word into “we blog”, and that was the beginning of the new term-blog-which stuck as both a verb and noun. Technically, it means a web page to which the owner regularly adds new entries, or “posts”, which are inclined to be (but need not be) short and frequently contain hyperlinks to other blogs or websites. Besides text and hypertext, posts can also contain pictures (“photoblogs”) and video (“vlogs”). Each post is stored on its own distinct archive page, the so-called perma-link, where it can always be found. On average, Technorati, a search engine for blogs, tracks some 50,000 new posts an hour.
Blogs usually have a raw, unpolished authenticity and individuality. This wouldn’t include a lot of blogs that firms and newspapers set up in this day and age. Thus the initial appeal of blogging is as an outlet for pure self-expression. Thus expressing an opinion is only the start. Many adolescents and teenagers consider e-mail as belonging to their grand-daddy’s age and instead are using either instant messaging (IM) or blogging for communicating with one another.
We, as students, are both bloggers and creators. We are each other’s audience, so that distinctions between the two disappear. We comment on each other’s blogs just as creators and audiences congregate ad hoc in meandering conversations, in a common space of shared imagination and interests.
I would like to conclude by stating the fact that in democratic societies, everybody does have the right to hold opinions, and that the urge to connect and converse with others is so basic that it might as well be added to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Sabeer Bhatia, the creator of Hotmail, adds, “Just as everbody has an email account today, everybody will have a blog in five years. This means, Mr Bhatia adds, that, “Journalism won’t be a sermon any more, it will be a conversation.”
The Independent published an in-depth look at news industry leaders' views on the future of news media. While most (if not all) of those interviewed for the story were based in the United Kingdom, many of the lessons also apply to U.S. media.
The prognosis is grim: they all seem to agree that newspapers are in trouble unless they can find A) a better revenue model than selling ad space and B) a means of retaining a readership in an Internet environment bursting at the seams with highly-specialized news producers.
With regard to the latter, several of the commentators said effective branding could save them. Jon Gisby from Yahoo! Europe sums up this perspective:
Do [newspapers] have a future? Absolutely, but it's a future that looks quite different from the one they've been used to. When you are putting content online, you need to use the brands that newspapers have around authentic news and quality journalism in a medium that's more democratic and interactive and slightly less tablets of stone.
If the industry's hanging its hopes on effective brands, then journalist James Surowiecki has news for them:
A study by retail-industry tracking firm NPD Group found that nearly half of those who described themselves as highly loyal to a brand were no longer loyal a year later. Even seemingly strong names rarely translate into much power at the cash register. Another remarkable study found that just 4 percent of consumers would be willing to stick with a brand if its competitors offered better value for the same price. Consumers are continually looking for a better deal, opening the door for companies to introduce a raft of new products.
"Brand equity" -- the value of a brand -- ultimately rests on the quality of the product. Newspapers have to make sure that they're doing quality reporting and commentary because that's what's going to distinguish them from all the rest of the news producers in the blogosphere and elsewhere online.
I clicked on a few of the converged sites and found many have not been updated since 2004. I don't think the information is not factual, but it does not provide accurate insight into how successful its convergence is currently. Perhaps one of us could follow-up and prepare as our final story.
Professor James Gentry of the University of Kansas http://www.journalism.ku.edu/ and Senior Fellow at The Media Center has prepared 3 case studies on the convergence phenomenon, click here http://www.mediacenter.org/convergencetracker/ to read them. I point out that these case studies were published April 2003 therefore some of the information and/or processes may have changed.
Seems as though convergence has worked for these conglomerates, but problems have occurred. "Lawrence Journal-World" was challenged to make sure all newspaper and television staff received story ideas, updates and coverage plans. At the time this case study was prepared, the implementation of new software was in the works to make this process much smoother.
One of the most important things that I think we could take away from these studies is the keys to making the partnership work. In this section, Gentry detailed what and how communication should occur, necessary training among print, media and online staff, unselfishness—not being concerned with who broke the news first and the buy-in—recognizing all staff as contributors.
On October 21st, approximately 1000 digital natives gathered together in Second Life for a presentation by author of "Smart Mobs" and professor of Digital Journalism at Stanford, Howard Rheingold. "The Pedagogy Of Civic Participation", a discussion on participatory media, was conducted entirely online on the campus of NMC (New Media Consortium), a virtual university.
I consider myself a digital native, in that I was born in the early 80s, but grew up along with technology. For a few years at least, I knew a non web-centric life of knocking on doors, land line phones, and snail mail. That quickly changed, and I embraced the new trend with instant messenger, emails, streaming media and blogs. That being said, I still find myself almost overwhelmed at times with the constant wave of ever increasing media and information that has become available. While mind boggling, it also seems very appropriate that a seminar on new media should be held in a digital landscape. What are the benefits of incorporating information sharing and learning in a world like Second Life? A summary of Rheingold's response:
The important question about 3D immersive environments is 'What's the appropriate use? What can we do here that we couldn't do elsewhere?". It's possible to stand in front of a classroom, talk and project slides - but not possible to walk you through a cathedral standing in the classroom, or rotate a protein molecule and enable people to move around it in a standard classroom. What can we do in 3D worlds that's uniquely attractive and appropriate to this medium that has some pedagogical purpose to it?
A summary of the event was posted today, and includes screencaps, sound clips, and main bullet points from the talk. The issues he brings up are very timely to our in class discussions, and it's unfortunate that we couldn't participate. Maybe next year, IJ Cohort 10 will exist entirely in virtual reality. Although this brings up a whole new issue in and of itself, as I can't imagine what sorts of effects sitting in class next to a wolf, a pixie, or a ninja might have on my education (see screen shots from article).
C-SPAN goes YouTube. Well, not quite. C-SPAN has bought into the user-generated video concept and plan to launch its own version of YouTube next month. Their site will be called Viewfinder.
Last year C-SPAN ordered YouTube to pull copyrighted, user-posted material from its site now they want to be like YouTube.
Viewfinder will be incorporated into C-SPAN’s current programming. Along with the call-in and email-in portion of their shows, users will now be able to video-in campaign and political content. Users will be asked to submit a 2-minute or shorter video to a “Question of the Week” question.
C-SPAN is not alone in this latest trend of old media trying to incorporate new media into their operations. CNN launched Exchange, its user-generated version, in July. CNN ask users to send in street-level, action report videos and also not so compelling video, like how you plan to handle your holiday travel plans.
The good thing for new media students is someone has to go through and view the submitted videos then decide which ones to publish.
No one knows how interested anyone will be in a video of your holiday travel plans, or if the political pundits will embrace the video submitted idea, but if this becomes a model for old media to get into new media there will be another job title to consider as a career option: Online Video Editor.
Peter Scheer of the California First Amendment Coalition thinks so.
In an editorial for the San Francisco Chronicle, Scheer says the business model newspapers are currently using online (giving away content for free, selling ads that target people who like free content) isn't working.
In order to give the news its "true value," he argues that newspapers and wire services should figure out a way to deprive the Web of "free, trustworthy news in real-time." Sites like Yahoo and Google would have to rely on dubiously accurate content from bloggers.
Scheer's idea goes against the grain. Before Knight Ridder went belly-up, it ordered its newspapers to update their Web sites more often with fresh content. Newspapers that contribute to my wire service often post stories on their Web sites before they send them to us - they view that, rightly, as a service to their readers.
For breaking news, the Web is a great tool. But I deal mostly with embargoed stories, some of which are exclusives that have been in the works for months.
The fear of being scooped on your own story isn't new for papers that contribute to wire services. Until a couple of years ago, the biggest concern I dealt with would be a Daily Telegraph story appearing in the Kalamazoo Times a day before it appears in the Daily Telegraph. While that's never a good thing, the stakes are higher now - a story I send on the wire could pop up on Google News or Yahoo within minutes.
A big part of my job is trying to get projects and investigations editors at contributing newspapers to tell me what they're working on and send me their stories well in advance of publication. When exclusives and embargoed stories that I move on the wire appear on Web sites before they're published in print, I get angry calls.
But those angry editors don't stop sending stories to the wire because, not surprisingly, they want people to read their work. Some of them would just like a little more control over the how and when.
Scheer is right when he says newspapers need to figure out a better way to make money on the Internet. And, for the sake of competition, figuring out a way to temporarily block certain stories from appearing on the Web would be great.
I don't have any answers, but I do know that one industry controlling the free flow of information is a dangerous proposition.
Prior to this course and reading this article, I have to be honest that I never really knew what the term “citizen journalist” was or rather what sort of a role a citizen journalist had and what that meant for journalists in general. However, I have seen this term repeatedly, whether it is has been in our class book, referenced in class, and now through several articles I have read.
This article basically talks about the “attempt to grab some of the Internet mojo of blogs, community e-mail groups and other ground-up news sources to bring back and fundamentally change the idea of what newspapers have been for more than a century.”
Gannett wants to merge their newspaper and online operations into single units and will also be drawing on non-journalists or “citizen journalists” in the process. Gannett has been testing its new system in several of its newspapers since July, and now the company’s newspapers are being urged to make the transition quickly. The article did mention that USA Today would not undergo the overhaul, though it has merged its newspaper and online staffs.
“It’s pretty big,” said Michael Maness, Gannett’s vice president of strategic planning. “It’s a fairly fundamental restructuring of how we go about news and information on a daily basis.
I also found it interesting how they have restructured their departments to contain an “Information Center” that is divided into 7 areas including: public service, digital, data, community conversation, local, custom content and multimedia.
This “movement” so to speak is really just demonstrating how the media is absolutely changing into a true converged medium. No longer are the days of a reporter just using a notepad and pencil. Now journalist are really faced with the challenge of being able to adapt and learn this new technology that has arrived and will continue to develop.
This makes me happy knowing that I am getting a head start in the game and am taking the time and effort to be “trained” in this new developing medium. I think this program in Interactive Journalism will give us the tools and preparation we need to know in order to achieve our professional goals.
Are Web logs cutting edge journalism or are they really today's pennysavers?
According to a story in today's New York Sun, two bloggers have set up a Web site called bloggingheads.tv where they and other bloggers get together to hold diavlogs (video dialogs).
Apparently some Web users want to see bloggers and not just read what they have to say without commercials that limit debates on the Sunday morning news shows.
But the technology of the diavlog is still lacking. The article compared watching the blogging heads to watching slow moving NASA video at times.
This leads me back to my original question. Will blogs someday be the newspapers of today with some other medium threatening to pull their plugs (Good evening, this is Larry Gillick with the Second Life Evening News) and diavlogs replacing Face the Nation?
I hope not. I for one believe that journalists have ethics and training so they don't inject their own opinion into reporting. I can't say that for citizen journalists. If someone writes that President Bush has offered Saddam asylum if he marries Jenna, I know I wouldn't believe it and would question the motive behind the blogger's writing. While each may have their place, I don't think blogs replace legitimate journalism.
But in another story Monday morning, Reuters carried a report that an Ipsos MORI poll found that Internet journals are a more trusted source of information in Europe than TV advertising or e-mail marketing. Apparently, blogs are replacing word of mouth for endorsing or condemning a product or service.
The survey found that 24 percent of Europeans trust blogs, 17 percent trust TV advertising and 14 percent trust e-mail marketing. Newspapers hold on to a narrow lead with 30 percent trusting print ads.
As the blogs become more popular, could they overtake trust in newspaper advertising? That would force advertisers to divert their ad budgets from newspapers and shrink news hole even more or possibly put some smaller, less-profitable newspapers out of business.
And instead of requiring the IJ students in Cohort 10 to write articles that get graded, will Amy make them blog and diavlog for grades?
An encouraging word (or 2, or 3, or...) and some tips
Amy seems to think there are too many furrowed brows in the classroom. I thought it might help iron a few out if I pointed out the following fact: It took the old veteran who gets paid to do this sort of thing just as long as the rest of you to complete today's assignment.
I was there just as long as anyone else and (though you may have been too polite to notice) exuding just as much flop sweat as the most rookie among you.
Writing is hard. It gets easier but it never gets easy. The good news: You can spend decades pushing pencils for a living and never get bored. Every assignment is a challenge.
The challenge in this one: There's no natural drama in most lectures, which means the burden of creating the interest is on the writer. Moreover, the topic of Mills' talk (internet and database journalism) was somewhat technical. It's always a challenge to translate techno-talk into plain English.
Here's how I generally go about writing a story on deadline:
I go through my notes and type the best stuff into my file. This gives me a handy list of the quotes and other elements that struck me as interesting. I start writing. I try to come up with a good lede (opening sentence) first, but if one doesn't come, I start writing other bits. They might be full paragraphs; they might be fragments of sentences. This helps me get my mind going. Other people might find it useful to rough out an outline; I just don't seem to have a linear thought process.
Eventually, the sentences start to come together and pretty soon, voila, you have a story! But you've got to get the fingers going. Otherwise, it's easy to get blocked.
The other big tip for deadline writing: Keep it simple. There's a time and a place for elegant, narrative style writing but when you are "right on the nut," as one of my mentors used to say, it NOT one of them. Sure, go ahead and try to push the envelope if you have a great idea. But if it doesn't start to flow after the first couple of minutes, scrap it and head back to the safety of the 5Ws formula. It's a great safety net when time is short. Bottom line: When in doubt, hit it straight up the middle.
For those of you who are facing your first interviews, here's a couple of techniques that work for me.
Start out with a few pleasantries. You might even confide your uneasiness with the whole process by telling the subject that this is your first interview, or that you haven't done this very often. It will create some rapport.
Don't be afraid to ask your subject to repeat a quote, or to walk you through an explanation again if you didn't get it the first time. It's perfectly legitimate and it will put you more at ease in your questioning and your note-taking.
Get a phone number or email address so you can contact the person with follow-up questions. Almost inevitably, there will be one you forget...or one your editor dreams up that you didn't think of. Sometimes, a piece will take an unexpected turn -- either because of an epiphany you have during reporting or writing -- and you will want to ask a source about a new development or a new angle. Again, knowing that you can get back to a source if need by will put you more at ease in your interview.
The Woodward & Bernstein experience is the exception, not the norm, in journalism. Most interviews are NOT hostile interviews. In most situations, this rule will serve you well: If you ask people to help you out, most of them will.
Most interviews are fun. You get to meet interesting people and find out what makes them tick. And that ain't a half-bad way to spend a day.
At NewAssignment.net, citizen journalists are collaborating with professional journalists to produce content that has gone under the radar or is too local or niche for larger markets to pick up.It sounds like a great idea and a real convergence of citizen journalists and professionals.The problems or debates rather, occur with funding.The site will not necessarily generate money through advertisers but donations, micro-payments, traditional fundraising and syndication rights.The argument is that once people or groups start funding these projects you have a conflict of interest.There will be an agenda to support and the investigative journalism team of pros and citizens becomes a PR firm.
Now, with a potentially huge pool of editors and journalists, there will be a very good and critical oversight committee.I think the citizen journalists will be more attune to this since many blogs have taken on the role of watchdog.
Lots of interesting questions about this site have been asked here.
Now, I don’t think this is the future of the newsroom but one direction the online media landscape is heading.
My name is Max and I'm a citizen journalist for the New York Times
According to this article in Techworld I may one day soon be able to say just that. One aspect of the so-called "Web 2.0" is that much of the content will be user-driven.
I've got mixed feelings about that aspect. As Ken mentioned in a post below about journalists being paid extra for blogs which prove popular, I fear that if journalism starts to gear too much towards what people want to know vs. what they need to know that we're going to have a dumber society and not a more well-informed one.
I'm of the school of thought that often times people need to be told what's important. Some people see that philosophy as condescending but I see it as reality. I think that many, if not most, people are inclined to grab the US Weekly instead of the Washington Post off the rack next to the checkout at the grocery store. I think that they should get a minor electrical shock when they pick up a tabloid and a little fairy should come down and lay a New York Times in their basket and say, "My dear, read this paper, these are things you need to know."
So, if reporters start writing fewer stories about government corruption and more stories about K-Fed and Britney because that's what people want to read, I think we're in trouble. I'm not even a big fan of tabloids like the NY Post and Boston Herald because I feel like they play to the lowest common denominator and place a higher value on sensationalism than on accuracy and thoroughness. I am a big fan of alt-weeklies like the Washington City Paper and the Boston Phoenix however, as even though they're a bit sensational by nature they often offer in-depth reporting on subjects that don't get explored in mainstream media.
Anyhow as far as citizen journalism, I think user-generated content can be useful, especially in spot news reporting, but I think it needs to be tempered with the strong hand of a traditional paper's editors. After all if I wanted to get the news from just any schmuck I could just check the million blogs run by wanna-be journalist schmucks out there.
One of the videos shown in class on Saturday, November 4, 2006 about how the internet is a ‘world of its own’ for teenagers started off a train of thought in my mind:
I have observed that parents have become more and more concerned about who their kids are socializing with online, and no wonder. Teens are spending increasingly more time communicating online with friends, and some of those friends are people they’ve never seen. They are becoming more and more reliant on the internet and other new media to communicate with their peers, and many say that they feel they can reveal more about themselves through this type of communication than telling in person.
It is possible that multiple modes of communication allow for expressing and connecting at a deeper level. Many teens report that some of their closest friendships are nurtured online and it’s easier to show their true selves online. They may hesitate to make statements to another teen in person but may feel more comfortable making the same statements in an online fashion. Because an online outlet for communication is available, the communication continues where it might not in its absence.
Social networking sites are a vital part of youth communication. Three in four teens have an online profile in a community or social networking sites. On average teens with social networking sites have 75 friends posted on that site.
Friendships are easily cultivated online because this is where youth are communicating with each other: 81 per cent have an IM buddy list, 85 per cent have an email contact list, 75 per cent have an online profile, and 77 per cent have cell phones that can have internet access.
I strongly believe that parents should be cognizant of the online world their children are socializing in and give them similar tools necessary to evaluate on-ground relationships. There are plenty of groups that parents can investigate to learn about online safety – ikeepsafe.org, blogsafety.com, wiredsafety.com and getnetwise.org.
(Source of statistics: Study released early November, 2006 by Harris Interactive and Alloy Media + Marketing).
Harken back to the early days of the Internet: users were few and content with any real reach had to have mass appeal. Not anymore, says Wired's Clay Shirky:
That was when 36 million people were online. Now that more than a billion people have access to the Web, there is no longer a trade-off between size and specificity. The basic math is simple: A tiny piece of an immense pie is huge.
The huge number of Web users now means that niche Web sites on narrow topics net impressive Web traffic. Shirky calls these audiences "meganiches" and says they will have enormous impacts on business and culture.
Common characteristics among meganiche sites are their use of user-generated content and penchant for focusing in on the arcana of otherwise mundane topics. Through Gaia Online, users create customizable anime-style avatars, chat in forums and interact with others in a multi-user role-playing game all in an environment inspired by Japanese animation.
Loyalty is another defining aspect of meganiche sites. Gaia’s 5 million registered users – “Gaians” – are responsible for a substantive portion of the site’s more than 200 million daily page views.
Shirky echoes arguments made by fellow Wired writer (and Editor-in-Chief) Chris Anderson in his book, "The Long Tail." Anderson argues (read his Wired article to get a synopsis of the key points he lays out in his book) that the Web lowers barriers that until now required distributors to create lowest-common-denominator content. Gaia Online’s creators can match their supply to the demand created by a global community of Japanese animation fanatics.
Shirky raises an important caveat for those of you inspired to go out and create the Web’s next spontaneous hit: Internet traffic won’t continue to grow at the pace it has over the past decade, so site creators will have to compete with one another more and more for page views. - Milo Sybrant
While pundits have been predicting the demise of traditional print newspapers in the face of online news, Google’s announcement on Sunday that its advertisers will now be able to purchase advertising space in print newspapers via its Web site. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/06/business/main2154538.shtml
Newspapers owned by The New York Times Co., Gannett, the Washington Post Co., the Tribune Co. and Hearst are among the 50 initial newspapers in the Google Print Ad program. So far, 100 advertisers including Netflix have already signed up for the program.
Advertisers will be able to bid on quarter-page ads and the newspapers will decide whether to accept the bid or pass, similar to the way Priceline.com sells airplane tickets or hotel rooms.
Google isn’t the first – Mediabids.com, which was started by a former publisher in 2003, auctions ad space in 3,500 newspapers. Mediabids takes an 8.5% cut of successful bids. During the three-month trial, Google won’t charge a commission. But if the program proves successful, Google would take a cut starting next year.
Google executives say they see big opportunity in the service. So initially, I guess, that means that they don’t foresee the demise of print newspapers.
But others see it as an attempt to lure more newspaper advertisers – especially smaller advertisers to whom the less expensive ads would appeal – to the Internet.
"These days all newspapers have a Web presence, so offering advertising by means of Internet and offline ads means Google has the opportunity to use print customers and its huge networks of offline advertising customers, and monopolize advertising as we know it," consultant Jacqueline Hole told Forbes.com.
With advertising revenues slipping – the Newspaper Association of America says it is still a $49-billion business – the program can only help the newspapers’ bottom line.
Other people in the class are probably in a better position than me to comment on it from a professional standpoint. But my gut feeling is that it’s a little disturbing, to say the least.
The magazine, Business 2.0, will be paying their reporters extra to provide blog commentary. The extra pay won’t be at a flat rate. Instead, the reporters’ pay will be based on the popularity of their commentary. The more people read a blog entry, the more the writer of that entry will be paid from ad revenue generated from that page.
In the story, the interviewer brings up several points with the magazine’s editor, who differentiates between the world of print media and a “world of commentary and instant analysis.”
Hopefully I’m not being naïve about this, but should reporters in their role as journalists be providing commentary on anything? The editor seems to make the argument that in this new world, his reporters need to participate in the “blog” medium to stay current. If what he’s referring to is maybe analyses of issues, that’s one thing. But if it’s the reporters’ own views on the issues, even in a blog, it would seem to negate their objectivity, at least in the magazine’s readers’ minds.
Separately, because reporters would have an incentive to write to the broadest audience, wouldn’t this also lead to stories that may grab visitors’ attention, but not necessarily have great import to society, at the expense of otherwise dull stories that might be more important? The editor said the reporters will have an incentive to write only articles that would be of interest to Business 2.0 readers, but this seems to be a rather large loophole.
Not really addressed in this six-minute story are two additional issues. Because the reporters are blogging as employees of Business 2.0, would the magazine be liable for any non-factual statements made by reporters on their blogs? Similarly, what happens if a reporter makes a statement contrary to the editorial stance of the magazine?
I’d be interested in hearing what other people think.Thanks!
